EFRC OR BUST: A new acronym's in town, and it's probably playing near you: The White House announced in late April that the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science will invest $777 million in Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) over the next five years, including 46 new EFRCs located at universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations, and private firms. Over 110 institutions from 36 states plus the District of Columbia will be participating in the EFRC research.

The list of new EFRCs includes efforts such as the EFR Center for Bio-Inspired Solar Fuel Production at Arizona State University in Tempe, the intriguingly named Center for Excitonics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Solar Fuels and Next Generation Photovoltaics center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Sandia National Laboratory recently completed a 90-billion-gallon biofuel study with General Motors in order to assess the feasibility of large-scale biofuel production in the U.S.

Your house's market value may be fragile enough already. So what happens to it if a wind farm locates nearby? Researchers in the United Kingdom reveal their findings in a recent issue of the International Journal of Strategic Property Management, a research journal of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and Napier University.

How Does Your City's Built Portfolio Measure Up?: Read the full report from the California Sustainability Alliance to find out more.

In late April, the Green Power Market Development Group - a group of 15 major corporate energy buyers that includes GE, IBM, DuPont and Google - announced it had reached its collective goal of purchasing 1,000 megawatts of cost-competitive power from renewable sources. The World Resources Institute (the group's founder) concurrently released a new report, Harnessing Nature's Power: Deploying and Financing On-Site Renewable Power. The report offers strategies and approaches that can be valuable to a wide range of firms looking at potential investments, contracts, and facility operations regarding use of renewable energy.

Many corporations concerned about energy are equally concerned about water. But one of the chief drawbacks to one water solution - desalination - has always been the prodigious amount of energy necessary for the process. Products from Energy Recovery Inc. and Calder AG (recently acquired by Flowserve) are bringing new possibilities into the picture, however, as they help recover nearly all energy expended in desalination. According to an early May report in The Wall Street Journal, ERI's PX Pressure Exchanger is in about 450 desal plants worldwide. What's more, according to analysts, many of the 160 announced new desal projects around the globe are still moving forward despite the economic crisis, as the need for water assumes primacy.

Jeffrey Ball is always on the ball for The Wall Street Journal when it comes to renewable energy's ups and downs. This piece from early May looks at what's clipping the wings of Clipper Windpower and other wind-energy companies.

Click here to view the Energy Industries Index in Site Selection publisher McKinley Conway's new book "Project New America." His proposal exploits hidden strengths to lift the country out of economic doldrums, achieve energy independence and set the stage for a golden age of leadership.